Fragile
by Toxic Smiling
Summary: Second installment in the Broken trilogy. - Tyler's home. Everything is supposed to be better now, but it's not. He has been taught respect, but at a terrible price. What's a boy to do when his entire world has been shattered in front of him?


**Nineteen requests. That is how many requests we got through PM, Anonymous Review, and Signed Review to tell of poor Tyler's experience at boot camp. Nine-freaking-teen.**

**You people should be commended for your collective persistence, and we honestly cannot thank you enough for your support. We all worked hard at bringing you this little number, so we would appreciate a review more than anything once your done reading. **

**I will warn you: we spared to detail at how PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) affects the mind of a child, so this gets pretty dark and OOC for Tyler. Don't say we're lying, either; I've seen it firsthand.**

**Well, on with the story.**

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"_We could run you know..."_

_"They'd find us, we get beaten."_

_"Try having a little faith, will ya, Lowry?"_

_And she waits a long time before finally smiling her assent, "How far to you think it is to the city?"_

_And then we're scrambling through the brush as though the Angel of Death himself was at our heels._

_Given the situation, he probably was._

Maybe he still is...

I hate my eyes. I hate how they look so bright now, like their gloating about being my only stability anymore. Their too brown against white the white and purple backdrop.

A soft knock at the bathroom door knocks my eyes away from my emaciated reflection. I needed to stop anyway, my bunkmates all said that thinking about the experience will only make it worse, that it'll only flesh the nightmares out more.

The best thing to do is forget. Just forget everything until I can convince myself it never happened.

"Tyler," a soft voice that I recognized as Da... Bennett's pierced the silence, "Am I alright to come in?"

I made a mad grab for my shirt, which was hanging on the towel rack. After two weeks in freezing Minnesota, the Pasadena heat has made me hot and clammy. Or maybe that was just the vomiting. I'd been doing that a lot recently, Mom... no, Ellen still hasn't gotten the stain out of the threshold from when I got home. I hated looking at myself without a shirt, I hated seeing that walking skeleton with chopped hair, covered in bruises in the mirror. I just want to believe that it isn't me, that none of this was ever real. I want to forget.

"It's time for dinner," Bennett whispers as his eyes focused on my shower curtain. A unfamiliar hatred boils inside me. How dare he not look at what was his fault?

"What's the matter," the harshness of my own voice startles me, "afraid to look at what you allowed, Bennett?" My hands gestured to by ravaged body, draped in clothes that no longer fit. Everything I own is too baggy now, I've had to split three new holes in favorite belt to make it wearable.

"Tyler..." he starts, his hands falling helplessly by his sides, "please don't do this."

His words only fan the flames building in my belly, and I have to clamp my teeth down on my tongue to keep from lashing out at him. I don't want Avery or Chloe to hear about the forced nature hikes in the rain, the beatings, the torture that literally penetrated me in ways that should never be allowed. I can't do that to them, not after Chloe burst into tears after she saw me walk out of my barrack. I'm not Tyler, she wailed, There's no way I'm her brother.

Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm not Tyler anymore. Maybe Tyler is still in Fanstone Military Academy along with Ali-

No. Not that. Never again.

"Tyler?" Bennett's voice pulls me back. I shake my head to clear it, which just causes my ears to ring.

"Nothing," I whisper, my throat suddenly thick, "Let's just go." Then I draw myself up to full height and walk as fast as I can down the hall, desperate to get away from the terrifying memories that claw mercilessly at my mind.

No. Chloe was right, I'm not Tyler anymore. And, oddly enough, that's okay. Maybe it's okay because I know the truth.

Tyler's dead.

There was turkey for dinner, which I had no appetite for. Ellen had made most of my favorite things for me, but I wasn't hungry. Every time someone said something, they'd direct it back to me in some way, and that was just annoying after a short while. "We're so happy your home, Tyler," "We missed you so much, Tyler, the house just wasn't the same without you around."

The sounded sincere, maybe they were, but I still don't feel bad for flinging a good plate on the floor and then leaving without being excused. What are they gonna do? Ground me? Take away the piles of new video games that were sitting untouched in the corner or the brand-new bike that was still slowly rusting in the driveway? Doesn't matter. Temporal things never matter, they couldn't do anything to help me and the few friends I'd made as we froze to death in the woods.

A cool breeze and a whimper pull my attention to the door, and through the slowly-encroaching darkness, I can make out a hairy creature on four legs. I have to suppress a small smile.

"Hey, buddy," Stan said as he padded up expectantly to the bedside, "How ya holdin' up?"

"The nightmares aren't as bad." I said. I couldn't help but allow a small twinge of guilt to enter my voice. I'd woken him and (if the angry emails were any indication) most of the neighborhood up by screaming myself awake. The doctor called them "Night Terrors", or some other technical term and prescribed yet another medication for me to start taking. It had helped, but not enough to get me over what happened to Al-

_The barking of dogs that caught our scent lacquer the cold air, I can see her stumbling, and then they all close in._

"Tyler? Tyler!" This time it was Stan's voice that pulled me back. I have to be more careful.

"Y-you're crying." Stan lifted his paw up to my face nervously. My stomach contracted dangerously, the meager dinner I had was threatening to make a reappearance. A gurgling nausea thunders inside my belly, and before I know what's happening I'm clutching the rim of the my sink like a python, my other hand grabbing at my stomach as the thick, pink vomit spatters from inside me and onto the porcelain.

Images of starving kids in the barracks and bleeding kids in the courtyard dance in my head as I squeeze my eyes tight. I relive the agony, the crippling panic, as the life leaves her bluebell eyes. Blood seeps from her wounds and into her hair like ink from a cracked bottle.

The tears fall like rain now, as they did with Avery on the roof that night that was so many aeons ago, it seems like. I feel myself erupt again and again with so much force that it hurts. When it stops, I'm left in near silence as I drop to my knees on the cold tile. The sound of Stan's voice and the churning in my stomach echo as if from far away, past measureless distances of time and space. But they're not, I feel Stan's paw cradling my flushed cheek. That slight contact tethers me to reality.

Then I black out in a whirl of color and silence.

_"No, I'm not going back! You can all go to Hell!" Her icy hands pulled on mine as dead branches crunched under our feet. My arms were snaked around her emaciated shoulders, desperate to protect her from the snarling canines and the armed guards. A large rock finds its way into her hands. _

_"You're just making this harder on yourself now, girl. Now come on back, and we'll all talk about this. Nice and easy like."_

_ He was lying through his browning teeth. The Commandant was one of those people who didn't take being defied well. If we went back, we'd both be killed. I'd seen it happen before once, a girl tried to run. They beat her to death without even realizing it._

_"I won't go back. I'm sorry, Tyler."_

_And I realize a second too late what's about to happen. With a final, apologetic glance in my direction, she brings the rock to her own temple._

_It's like cracking an egg, with brilliant crimson running and splashing onto the earth below. She falls back in slow motion, her perpetually cold flesh brushes mine ever so fleetingly, and then she lies still. The rapid rise and fall of her chest signifies that she is still alive, but far beyond of saving. The guards are screaming now, but I'm too numb to really hear them._

_And suddenly, I'm back in the clearing. Clutching a lifeless hand as its owner faded away. Her eyes were faltering twin embers of an ethereal blue flame that had dwindled into black slag._

_And I'm left alone, trembling and sobbing like a child, among the ashes._

"What happened, Tyler?"

My eyes fell again. "I guess I just... Gave out."

"No, what happened... there?" He flicks his snout to the north, where Fanstone is. "Who is Alexandria?"

That name. It's like Stan just pressed a magic button in my head that reopened the floodgates. Stan stands by patiently while I proceed to wail like a banshee, desperate that the screaming will smother the horrible pocket of dark matter in my chest, the place where good thoughts are killed and reborn as night terrors. The part of me that still thinks that she's still here, that that damned coroner made a mistake and that she's still alive.

But she's not. My fingers grapple with nothing as they search for Stan's face. When they finally find him, I feel him shaking beneath my touch.

.

"Shhh... I'm here, buddy. I'm not going anywhere. I can promise you that."

Eventually, tears give way to whimpering which gives way to silence, and I'm left feeling colder and emptier that before. Sticky, red blood comes in a slow trickle from my nose.

"Alexandria was a girl I knew in Fanstone," I manage, and theirs no longer any bitterness in my voice. It's like listening to an echo, empty. "We were running drills one morning, and I fell. Then... Then we just talked. About life, and about the way the world works. But... But when they started looking for us, we tried to run. We wanted to get away."

I could feel my voice speeding, racked with the fear that was still all too real to me, "Then they caught us. She said that she'd rather die than go back."

I feel his head coming to rest on my shoulder, and I struggle to grasp how something as innocent as he is could still love a thing like me. Used up and broken.

My stomach stirs audibly again, and I'm suddenly overcome with exhaustion. Perhaps Bennett would try to tuck me in soon, like he did when I was young. Like he did when I was whole. He's a fool if he believes that sticking his nose in my ass will ever warrant forgiveness, after what he allowed the scum to do to me. I don't need him, or Ellen, or any of them. Not any more.

He was so wrong those many days ago: Mom would be proud of me. I was a good son. Bennett deserved all the scorn that this world had to offer.

I know they shouldn't, but these musing comfort me as I drift to my bed. It feels far too big now, too vast, but it'll do. Stan loyally beds down at the footboard and falls asleep instantly. He's so pure, so innocent, and watching him makes me ache in longing for everything that was broken. Back when I was actually Tyler.

But that's all gone now. Tyler died clutching a martyred girl in a Minnesota clearing three days ago. Anything I am is just a cheap reflection in a broken mirror, a crack in the world.

A world that was too fragile already.

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**Folly is bound up in the heart of a child...**

**Proverbs 22:15**


End file.
